


The Other Child

by Space_Samurai



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Non-Linear Narrative, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21745600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Space_Samurai/pseuds/Space_Samurai
Summary: She's too old for this, Omera thinks as she wipes the bile from the corner of her lip.Winta stares at her in silent worry, eyes wide and watery."Don't worry," Omera soothed her. "It was the same with you.”-In which Mando still leaves, but a part of him remains.
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Omera (Star Wars)
Comments: 69
Kudos: 508





	The Other Child

**Author's Note:**

> Mandomera for life y'all

Her son has pink skin and a little head full of black hair. His skin might darken after a day or two, much like Winta’s did, Omera isn't sure. After all, she never did see the Mandalorian without his helmet or armor. The color of his skin was as much of a mystery as the rest of his features.

Winta watches her brother nurse with curious eyes. Most of the children in the village are of age with each other and it crosses her mind that this might be the first newborn she has ever seen.

"I'll let you hold him when he's done," she tells her. Omera is still tired from the birth.

Winta bites her lip.

"Does he need to wear a helmet?" She asks seriously.

"What—? No." Omera wants to laugh. And cry. "Only mandalorians wear the armor."

"But he _is_ mandalorian." Winta points out. 

She knows bits and pieces of the story. Omera hasn't told her the full truth, as Winta is a child and she doesn't need to know the details of her brother's conception. 

She knew what it mattered, that the nice man was the father. 

"Those raised by mandalorians are mandalorians. He won't be one." 

Omera thought that, as much as he had been devoted to his religion, it had also brought him much loneliness. She wouldn't wish that upon his son.

**-**

It happened once.

If he had been nervous that night, he had done a fine job hiding it.

It was two nights or three before he left, she had come to the barn with dinner and he had thanked her for it. Later, she went back to retrieve the dishes and tray. She hadn’t returned to her hut.

He had been kind, she’d recall afterwards. She would remember the feeling of his hands, warm and callous against her bare skin, and the strength of his body. She had traced every mark and scar she could find in him, desperately wanting to imprint the shape of him in her mind so she wouldn’t forget it. 

He hadn’t seemed nervous, but he had been equally hungry. Nobody had touched him since he was a kid and Omera was all too happy to indulge.

She never saw his face, however, she did hear his voice. Without a helmet, in the dark of the night, he whispered her name with his face buried on her neck and it sounded like a prayer. 

Omera doesn’t think he ever said it again, or before.

**-**

She's too old for this, Omera thinks as she wipes the bile from the corner of her lip.

Winta stares at her in silent worry, eyes wide and watery.

"Don't worry," Omera soothed her. "It was the same with you.”

Winta nods silently and goes to hug her middle, burying her face in Omera’s stomach. She caresses her hair and rubs her back. Such is the life of a mother, Omera is the one sick and Winta is the one who gets comforted. The thought manages to get a smile from her.

“It won’t last for long. With you it was gone in a few weeks.” It’s meant to be reassuring, but the memories of those first days after she found out she was pregnant came to mind. It hadn’t been as pretty as she thought it would be.

Though once she gets so big she can’t sleep and her child begins kicking her bladder and ribs, that’s when things will get _truly_ hard. Omera hadn’t enjoyed that part, but it had been worth it at the end.

It had also been easier because her husband was there.

 _He_ had left no way for them to contact them, so Omera had no way of letting him know about her state. She had told no one in the village yet, as it was too early to be certain she’d get through the first months. Only Winta knew, and that was because Omera had to keep her from running to the village’s healer after she fainted for a second.

Her daughter had taken the news rather well, Omera would say. Though her worry was evident, as everyone knew how dangerous a pregnancy could be for the mother. Some women of the village had passed during childbirth, leaving grieving husbands and children. Omera wasn’t sure if Winta knew about such things, or if she was simply worried about seeing her sick.

“It’ll be fine.” She murmured in her hair.

**-**

When Omera returns to the ponds, with her son strapped to her back, she sees that Caben and Stoke have taken over her job. And no matter how much she complains and assures them that she’s fit to work and feeling fine, they send her back home to rest.

She’s secretly grateful, as she’s been getting little sleep lately.

Her son is resolved to remind her that he’s alive, by crying loudly in the middle of the night, the middle of the day and in the afternoon. Omera feeds him and rubs his back, comforting him the best she can. She had forgotten what it was like to have a newborn.

She had thought about sending Winta to sleep with neighbors, to her friend’s hut, so she could get a decent night of sleep without hearing her brother cry. She finally decided against it, she didn’t want the girl to feel as if she was kicking her out or as if she was being replaced by her brother.

Winta had been surprisingly helpful and eager to help. She rocked her brother back and forth patiently, and the boy would quiet down and pass out on his sister’s arms.

Most nights, he ends up sleeping in the cot with Omera, between piles of blankets to ensure she won’t roll over him in the night. Officially, he sleeps on the crib that had once belonged to Winta and then to another child.

**-**

She hasn’t chosen a name yet, though she’s been thinking about it for months.

She knows little to nothing about traditional mandalorian names. She didn’t even know about _his_ name, as he had never offered it and she never asked for it.

Caben claims he has read a lot about mandalorian and suggest quite a few names.

_Saggur, Chex, Vizla, Vini, Korkie, Jango, Kopu, Thren._

“ _Tenann…”_

“What?”

“Uh?”

“The last one you said, Tenann?”

When he is two weeks old, her son becomes Tenann of Sorgan.

**-**

Cara Dune, of all people, learns first about the pregnancy.

Not by her own intuition, good as it may be, but by Omera’s confession and she doesn’t need to ask who the father is.

“I was hoping that…” Omera bit her lip. “Do you have a way of contacting him?”

She wouldn’t force him to shed the armor and stay as a farmer –no matter how much she would have liked him to do so- but Omera thought he had a right to know.

Her hopes were crushed by the woman. “I don’t.” She says and she proceeds to explain how hard it’ll be to track him down, as he was currently a fugitive and great at hiding. Omera nods numbly at her words.

“I could search for one of the bounty-hunters of the guild,” Cara Dune offered. “If they have a tracking fob, it’ll get me to the kid. And where the kid is, the Mandalorian is near.”

A bounty-hunter had found them on Sorgan, Omera recalled. Cara had been the one to dispose of them.

“No,” she said. “Don’t look for anyone. If he’s meant to find us again, he will.

**-**

Winta is nineteen when she leaves.

Omera knew it was coming. Her eyes always on the sky and though she doesn’t resent her duties in the village, Omera can see they don’t make her happy. She wants more.

She doesn’t hold her back. She’s never been the kind that holds onto things.

Tenann is ten when he hugs his sister goodbye as she parts to her adventures. Omera is forty-eight.

**-**

Her son’s skin doesn’t turn darker.

So _he_ must have been fair of skin, Omera thinks. She can see Winta, and thus herself, in many of his young features. She’s not disappointed about it, though she would have liked to see bits of his father on him.

Still, much like Winta, he was a cute baby. Omera thought that half-day of labor was worth it.

**-**

Her son resembles his father in few ways. His quietness, for example.

Many adults have pointed out his solemn expressions in the silent moments. Omera brushes it off, her son has no trouble making friends in the village and excluding the fact that he has no father, he is like the rest of them in every regard.

He doesn’t ask for his father, Omera is the one to tell him. And before that, she’d rock him to sleep with tales of Mandalore and its people. The very few she found suitable for a child.

When he was six, she took him away to the deep of the forest and taught him how to shot a blaster. Though she has no wish of turning him into a proper mandalorian (nor does she have the resources to do so), weapons _were_ a part of his father’s religion. It’s fitting that he should learn how to use them.

-

“ _I found them_ ,” Winta tells her excitedly through a holo. Omera’s simple life trembles.

**-**

She realizes when she fails to keep down breakfast.

Perhaps it’s silly.

Her heart squeezes painfully in her chest when everything comes together and yet a light of hope burns in her heart.

It had hurt to watch him go, though she had understood.

One couldn’t cage a bird or keep it from flowing away. It wasn’t the way of things.

Omera’s hand went to her belly. The Mandalorian might have left, but a part of him remained.

**-**

She recognizes the ship, old as it may be now. She watches it land with the heart on her throat.

She doesn’t recognize the man who gets off the ship, but she does know the armor and the helmet he carries on hand.

Omera has aged and she’s not the woman he left behind all those years ago, but her name remains the same.

It fills the silence of the village when he says it.

**-**

Tenann is fifteen when he meets his father.

When they stand next to each other, Omera realizes he has his nose.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts ;) ?


End file.
